Alone (9 page)

OKAY. SO. YEAH. THE CRUTCHES HAVE
got to go
.

Ed stood on the roof of his building, breathing in the air and trying to convince himself that he really didn't need the
metal contraptions backing up his pathetically weak leg muscles.

The thing was, no matter what his brain said, his legs were pretty sure it was full of hooey.

Just last week he had clattered down four flights of stairs with his crutches. He'd needed desperately to get down quickly, with a minimum of fuss. If ever he was going to have some big, TV-movie-style breakthrough, that really would have been a good time. But his thigh muscles had been just as dull and stubborn as always. So why would this be any different?

Well,
his brain said,
because now you know Lydia said your legs are fine, so you can just move on from the whole helpless thing
.

Okay. But Lydia might be full of crap. She might be
an escaped mental patient posing as a physical therapist to get her jollies
. In which case Ed was going to toss out two hundred dollars' worth of medical equipment and spend the evening scrootching down a flight of stairs on his skinny skate-kid ass for no good reason at all.

He sighed. It was do-or-die time. If he wasn't going to toss the crutches, he might as well shove them back onto his arms, return downstairs, and catch another “Real World in San Francisco” rerun.

But that was too much to bear. No way could he bear to watch Puck go off on that poor guy Pedro again.

Ed closed his eyes, took a breath, and gave a little “oof” as he hoisted his crutches over the side of the roof. There were a few seconds of silence, and then
he heard them crash into the crud-filled Dumpster below.

There was no getting them back now. He turned around, stepped forward confidently, felt his left knee buckle, and landed smack with his face against the aluminum-colored tar of the roof.

He lay there for a moment, tasting rubber, working his jaw. This was going to be interesting.

He rolled onto his back and looked up at the setting sun.

“Am I out of luck? Or can I really do this?
he asked the heavens.

There was no answer, which was kind of a relief since the last thing Ed needed was to start hearing
voices from the sky.
Bad enough he had a face full of grime and a seriously wounded ego.

And a mental block that was screwing up his life beyond belief.

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed right to him, what his physical therapist had said. His whole life had changed when he had his accident. Before, he'd been Shred, the footloose skater who refused to take anything seriously. That was what had gotten him into trouble, really—his inability to stand up to Heather and her bitchy friends, to be serious
enough to say, “What, are you kidding? If I skate that hill, I'll end up in a wheelchair.”

So instead of opening his mouth, he'd skated the hill. And ended up in a wheelchair.

Which had changed him completely. Sure, he was still Ed, still the wiseass. But he saw how the world had changed in response to him. Heather had peeled off and broken up with him. His sister, embarrassed by his paraplegic status, had faded from his life. The pain of that had given him a reason to step back—well, wheel back—and had helped him put up defensive walls between himself and everyone close to him.
The wiseass attitude had gone from being a hobby to a necessity
. And he'd liked it that way. He'd felt safer.

Maybe he'd been using the chair, and later the crutches, to keep himself from going back to the old Ed, the stupid and trusting Ed who thought that just because you loved people, that meant they'd stick by you.

Maybe what he really wanted was for Gaia to show up and cheer him on.

Maybe he had to accept the fact that he was going to have to rescue himself. And promise himself that if he could get his legs to work, he'd keep rescuing himself and move on from wiseass Ed and scared Ed to some kind of third Ed. A new and better Ed.

“All right? A new and better Ed,” he promised out loud.

He hoped someone heard him. Because if not, he was going to have a hell of a time getting downstairs.

TATIANA'S MOOD WAS ABSOLUTELY
rancid as she cleaned her room for the umpteenth time. No matter what she did, she couldn't seem to get the
mental stench
of Gaia out of her room. There was no dirt, there was no actual odor; it was the aura, she supposed, of that grouchy, weird girl that seemed to pervade the air even after she took Gaia's stuff out to the living room.

Oh, who was she kidding. Tatiana knew exactly what was wrong with her, and it had nothing to do with Gaia. Ed still hadn't called. He'd kissed her, held her,
used
her, and hadn't even bothered to pick up the phone to ask her out again. Or give her the old heaveho like a man. No, she was expected to figure out, from the silence, that he just wasn't interested.

Real great, Ed,
she thought.
Very gentlemanly
.

It didn't help that bitch-
meister
Gaia was the real
object of his affections. Tatiana would never be able to figure that one out. Gaia was awful. She had dumped Ed. She had no interest in him. Yet Ed preferred this awful girl to Tatiana, who truly cared for him.

And there was no hope of getting rid of her—not as long as their parents remained locked in whatever idiotic romance they were in. Of all people her mother could date, why Gaia's father?

The whole situation was starting to stress her out beyond belief.

“Speaking of the devil,” she said out loud to herself-as she heard the front door of the apartment open and slam shut. Even Gaia's footsteps sounded hostile. Tatiana stepped to the door of her room and glared at her.

“So now you are a hooker?” she asked.

Gaia stopped in her tracks. “What?” she snapped.

“From school. You played hooker today. You were not in your classes.”

Gaia's face broke into a smile for approximately three seconds.

“Hooky! I played hooky. Jeez, Tatiana, you should at least know what your insults mean before you toss them at me.”

“Oh.” Tatiana felt stupid. And the smile, which had opened Gaia's face so beautifully, was gone as quickly as it had appeared,
as if she had yanked down a
garage door over her true feelings. “
Well, I think you are supposed to attend school.”

“I thought we were splitting up the apartment so we wouldn't run into each other,” Gaia said, avoiding the issue at hand. “Like, you stay out of my business and I stay out of yours?”

“I just think it is very irresponsible of you to skip classes,” Tatiana said.

“Irresponsible?” This seemed to strike a chord with Gaia. “You have no idea what responsibilities I'm dealing with.”

“Oh, what, the responsibility to make everyone around you feel miserable all the time?” Tatiana said, her hand on her hip as
the sarcasm torpedoed out of her.
“The responsibility to be the most unpleasant person on the planet? Or perhaps you feel responsible to give me an ulcer before my mother returns from her business trip?”

“Do me a favor and don't bring your mother into this,” Gaia said. “I don't even want to think about that double-crossing bitch.”

“All right. All right!” Tatiana stormed over to Gaia and stood in front of her. Gaia towered over her by a good several inches, glaring down like an icy Valkyrie. But Tatiana was too pissed to care. She suddenly had all the attitude of Li'l Kim being told her Armani towels would not be waiting backstage. In other words, she was absolutely radiating fury.

“You listen to me, Gaia Moore,” Tatiana said, her voice quiet yet piercing in its fury. “You can insult me all you want. But when you insult my mother, you are stepping over the line. I will not stand for it. And yes, I am aware that you can kick my butt. You are bigger than me and you are a bully, so why don't you go ahead? I'd rather have a bloody nose than stand by and listen to you insult my mother again.”

“Do yourself a favor and get the hell out of my face,” Gaia told her, her face as impassive as a granite slab. “I could give you a lot worse than a bloody nose.”

“And this is something you are proud of,” Tatiana sneered. “It is revolting. I wish with all my heart that you and your slimy father would leave my mother and me alone.”

“Look who's talking about slime,” Gaia shot back. “My father might have horrible taste, but at least he's not a double-crossing snake.”

“What are you talking about?” Tatiana demanded.

“What are
you
talking about?” Gaia echoed. “You think our parents are just having an innocent romance? Please. Why don't you grow up and see what's really going on?”

“Oh, and what is really going on, Gaia?”

“My father is a government agent, Tatiana,” Gaia shouted, letting her secret spill from her lips, whooshing out, fueled by the fury that had taken over all her judgment. “An American government agent. And your
mother is nothing but a filthy spy, sent here to seduce him—and then destroy him. Face it. She's a double-crossing sleazebag.”

For a long moment Tatiana gazed into Gaia's eyes. Then, in
an impressive display of adrenaline-fueled, mother-defending fury,
Tatiana let loose a sucker punch of such immense proportions, it dropped Gaia to the floor like a featherweight in the ring with Mike Tyson.

Gaia blinked once. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her vision grew dark, and she thudded to the floor. She outweighed Tatiana. She was trained in the art of combat.

But she hadn't counted on Russian family loyalty.

HEATHER DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO
look at the clock to know it was exactly three-thirty. She didn't need the clanging of the bell signaling the end of the school day, either.
The shrill hum in her head
was all she needed to know it was time for her next dose of pills.

Now that she'd gotten on a better schedule with them, though, she didn't look like crap all the time. She tossed four pills toward the back of her throat and downed them with a bottle of Evian. She knew that when Josh had first given her these pills, it had taken some time for her body to get used to them, and she hadn't known enough to take the next dose at the first sign of withdrawal. Now she had it down to a science.

She waited a moment, and the buzzing in her head ceased just as a warm tingle entered her veins, starting in her belly and radiating outward.
Boy, this stuff works fast,
she thought. When she took an Advil for her cramps, she could be writhing in pain for twenty minutes or more, but somehow these Josh pills entered her bloodstream almost instantly.

Whatever this stuff is, I could make a mint with it at Twilo
.

But that wasn't why she was taking these pills. She hitched her backpack higher on her shoulder and walked out of the school, toward home, enjoying
the speeded-up smoothness of her thoughts and the intensely saturated colors of the world around her.
This wasn't just a pleasure trip, though she did enjoy the way the pills made her feel. But she wasn't just another spoiled rich kid getting back at Mummy and Daddy by developing a heroin habit or snorting coke in the maid's bathroom. These pills served a purpose—a serious one. They were prepping her for the ultimate transformation.

Josh had assured her that if she kept up her end of the bargain and filled her system with whatever was in the orange prescription bottle, her body would be all the more ready to receive the fearless infusion.

That was going to be fantastic. A life without fear? That would finally set her apart from all the annoying regular people around her. After all the time she'd put in playing the popular game, after all the hurt she'd felt in losing both Sam and Ed to Gaia and all the suffering she'd gone through with her family, it was totally what she deserved.

Enough of this everyday-living shit for her. Heather wanted to be plucked from obscurity and given something that would set her apart forever.

And unlike Gaia, she'd know how to use her power.

Heather was so caught up in her thoughts, she didn't watch where she was going. She stepped onto Eighth Street right in front of a yellow taxicab, which blared its horn at like eight million decibels and scared her half to death. She jumped right out of her skin.

“Hey!” she shouted, her heart thudding in her chest. “Watch it!”

The cabdriver only laughed his stinky head off. He put the car in neutral and gunned the engine, which made Heather do
the panicked spaz jump-run
out of his way. The cabdriver laughed even harder.

Perv.
He probably got his thrills from scaring girls on every corner. Heather hated herself for having shown how startled she was. In response, she stood on the corner and held out a beautifully manicured middle finger at the cabdriver as he drove off.

Okay, jackass,
she thought.
You got me once. But you'll never scare me again
.